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South African Communist Party at 90: Is it still relevant? Two views

By Jeremy Cronin

July 31, 2011 -- Amandla! -- Mikhail Gorbachev, who presided over the liquidation of his own
communist party, is not generally well regarded in communist circles.
There is, however, at least one pertinent observation in his book,
Perestroika. There he writes that he realised there was need for change
in the former Soviet Union when the program of the party was
increasingly determined by the march of the calendar, by a ritualistic
commemoration of historical dates.

This weekend [July 31] the South African Communist
Party (SACP) marks its 90th anniversary. But it would be a mistake for us to
celebrate the occasion as mere ritual.

As a young operative I was
proud of being recruited into a party that, from its outset in the early
1920s, had pioneered non-racialism -- not just in principle, but
shoulder to shoulder in active struggle. It was the party that started
night schools and literacy classes [for blacks].

Like other young recruits I regarded the party's history of
persecution as a badge of honour. There was a long list of martyrs --
dating back to Johannes Nkosi, assassinated in 1930 while addressing an
anti-pass rally. But what most impressed me was the SACP's analysis of
the South African reality and how it connected to a wider global
struggle. In the 20th century we were not alone. Everywhere communists
were at the forefront of struggle and sacrifice.

We had a sense of
being a part of shaping world history. Individually, many of us might
not survive, but, so it seemed, we were on the side of history in the
struggle for a better world. This was not about instant personal
gratification.

Everywhere across the 20th century, the left in
opposition performed heroically. But what about communists in power?
Alas, that was often a different story.

The very sense of history
being "on our side", a powerful narrative for communists enduring
torture chambers, could turn into an authoritarian arrogance when in
power. The 20th century is littered with tragic "great leaps forward" as
history was frog-marched in the direction it was supposedly meant to
go.

All of this made the dialectical twist of the late 1980s and early 1990s particularly poignant -- but salutary -- for South African
communists. At the very moment we were poised, locally, to make the
democratic breakthrough for which generations had sacrificed, the Soviet
legacy which had inspired us seemed to be lying beneath the rubble of
the Berlin Wall. History wasn't necessarily on our side, after all.

The
imminent breakthrough locally and this wider global context led to
senior departures from the party. Politics, for some, became just the
art of the possible -- and not also the science of the probable, and a
passionate struggle for the desirable. It was as if the collapse of the
Soviet bloc suddenly made capitalism a wonderful friend. But despite
some departures from the party, thanks to the leadership of Joe Slovo
and Chris Hani, the SACP grew and navigated the democratic transition as
an important protagonist. Our membership now stands at over 140,000,
making us the second-largest political formation in South Africa.

But what,
in 2011, does the SACP bring to the party? In the first place, we
remain a party of activism. A key campaign at present is the struggle
against the corrosive impact of corruption. It requires no less courage
for those on the frontline than our struggles of the past. Already,
tragically, there are communist martyrs in this new struggle, among them
Radioman Ntshangase, gunned down for exposing corruption in Mpumalanga.
In the second place, without being the ruling party, the SACP assumes
joint and collective responsibility for active governance.

Thirdly,
the party continues to advance a critique of capitalism. Capitalism has
shown a capacity to survive its crises -- at huge cost to the majority
of humanity. But the replacement of capitalism has now become a
civilisational imperative. Capitalism cannot self-perpetuate without
constantly pursuing incremental growth, without transforming everything
into a commodity (health care, education, water, shelter, and now even
carbon emissions). But this relentless drive for profits is leading us
into ecocidal extinction. Armed with a proud 90-year history, the SACP
seeks to confront these challenges which, after all, are no different
from those facing all of humanity.

'The SACP is
largely invisible in popular struggles for social justice'

By Mazibuko K Jara

July 31 -- The South African Communist
Party can be faulted on many fronts, but its sterling contribution to
defeating apartheid and challenging capitalist exploitation was
personified in the principled socialist morality and selflessness of
Chris Hani, Joe Slovo and others.

In Hani's words: "To be the
general secretary of the SACP was belonging to a party that must link up
with day-to-day struggles of the people."

Yet today's SACP is
largely invisible in these popular struggles for social justice. At
worst, the SACP proclaims these struggles as social liberalism and
counter-revolutionary.

For all its 90 years of history, current
radical rhetoric and the continued presence of many genuine rank and
file socialists in it, the SACP is a shell that stands for a
demobilising politics of intrigue, power battles, self-justifications
for indulgence in trappings of state power, and promotion of personality
cults.

The SACP has failed to move beyond a state-obsessed
centralism. The SACP is now reduced to the role of mollifying
increasingly desperate and restless poor and working people, who bear the
brunt of post-apartheid capitalism.

The crisis of the SACP
cannot spell the end of left renewal. The challenge for forces of the
left, poor and working people, and others committed to social justice, is
how to engender a new counter-hegemonic politics that is relevant and
concrete. The formation in January 2011 of the Democratic Left Front is
only one step in the much larger long-term processes of political,
social and economic struggles ahead.

One of the most important
struggles in this regard is to build alternatives to limited conceptions
of political agency where, to count as a political force, a political
actor has to form a party and contest elections in a one-party dominant
model in a capitalist society.

This conception displaces the
politics of the people with the self-serving politics of politicians.
Politics can and must be about the people. Ordinary people cannot just
be regarded as merely disgruntled and powerless protesters. They can go
beyond apathetic one-off voting every five years or limited wage-based
challenges to the wealthy business elite, or powerless grumbles against
the failures of the ANC government.

Like Abahlali baseMijondolo,
the Social Justice Coalition and many other localised struggles, the
Grahamstown-based Unemployed People's Movement shows the possibilities
of a people-based politics. Formed in August 2009, it has become the
most powerful force in the Makana municipality. Its formation
represented a collective recognition of the appetite for
self-emancipation, and without self-organisation, the unemployed in
Grahamstown might as well have remained on the margins of that divided
small town.

In its short two years of existence, the movement has
marched, written deputations, submitted memorandums of demands, held
sit-ins, held meetings with the state, used the law and more.

It
has challenged unemployment, poor-quality housing, lack of housing, lack
of water and sanitation, lack of electricity and street lighting,
violence against women and problems with the social security system. The
movement has humanised politics by concerning themselves with how to
rebuild the social fabric of a poor community.

In all this, the
movement has no illusion that the gradual recognition of constitutional
socioeconomic rights and holding government accountable will be the
ultimate answer to the systematic and structural marginalisation of the
unemployed. The Unemployed People's Movement is grappling with how to
connect immediate struggles with their systemic roots and how to
challenge the state as the main transmitter of inequalities.

The movement's experience is only the start of what will definitely be a long-term process to renew politics in South Africa.

It
is this kind of renewal that Chris Hani yearned for when he said: "In the
struggle ... we have always identified the central role of the
oppressed." Hani's yearning lives in the Unemployed People's Movement
and challenges the many genuine socialists in the SACP's rank and file
to ask and answer hard questions, lest they get left behind by history.

Comments

The SACP is not, in fact, 90. The CPSA, founded in 1921, became the first CP to liquidate itself when the majority of party members — arguing Stalin's stages theory and the "black republic" thesis — decided in 1950 when faced with banning by the then new apartheid state, that there was no need (at that stage) for a separate CP. The SACP was subsequently founded in 1953 by former CPSA members who felt that an underground party, supporting the nationalist ANC, was necessary.

I ran across this statement from cravenly pro-capitalist Communist Party of India (Marxist) to the SACP. Two parties who prop up capitalism through managing the capitalist system, rather than opposing it...

CPI(M) Greets SACP on its 90th Anniversary

The following is the text of the message of greetings sent by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party on July 29, 2011, on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of its founding

THE Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) conveys its warm fraternal communist greetings to the South African Communist Party (SACP) on the 90th anniversary of its founding.

During these 90 years of its existence, the SACP has played an important part in the national liberation struggle and in the battle and defeat of apartheid. The history of the SACP is a history of a party tempered in the consistent struggle not only against the racial oppression but also against the class oppression of the bourgeoisie. In spite of the severe repression unleashed by the white supremacist colonialists, the party steadfastly adhered to the principles of Marxism-Leninism and to the cause of the working class.

Since the victory over the apartheid regime, the SACP is playing an important role in the ruling coalition along with the ANC and COSATU. It is seriously engaged in transforming the highly exploitative and discriminatory apartheid structures and to provide the predominantly black population with economic empowerment. The SACP is also playing a prominent role in ensuring that the country does not deviate from its path of National Democratic Revolution. In this background, it is not out of place to recall the recent struggle the party had to wage against the '1996 Project'. Rich from its experience, both from being part of the government and also through its experience of earlier struggles out of the government, has made the SACP conclude that the success of the transition of South Africa to consolidate the national democratic revolution can only come under the working class hegemony.

The CPI (M) is following with interest the struggles carried out by the SACP and its efforts to achieve the goals of National Democratic Revolution. We are also observing eagerly the struggles waged by the SACP for an enhanced role of the State in the economy, for better healthcare and against corruption.

On the occasion of the 90th anniversary of its founding, the CPI (M) once again greets the SACP and the entire membership of the party on this joyous occasion. We take this opportunity to once again reiterate our fraternal solidarity and hope to strengthen the bonds of friendship further in the coming days.

Communist cadres in all fronts and terrains of struggle to build people’s power for socialism

Celebrating 90 years of the South African Communist Party

Celebrating 90 years of the SACP is most of all a
celebration of a heroic and persistent struggle by South African
communists for national liberation, people’s power, socialism and for
the reconstruction of our country from the ravages of colonialism and
apartheid. Ours is a principled and unshakable struggle for a better
South Africa and a better world.

A vanguard party of socialism

Capitalism
constitutes the gravest threat to the survival of humanity and our
planet. Whilst the world today produces enough food for everyone to eat, billions
of people go to bed hungry every night. Our rivers are destroyed, our
forests are cut down, the air we breathe polluted in the drive to
increase profits for the few. Factories are closed, workers are
retrenched. There is one simple reason for this, it is that the minority
of the rich are only interested in proftis for themselves. . Only a
more human system, socialism, can harness the energies of all our
people, the human inventions and technology for the benefit of humanity
as a whole.

As
we celebrate 90 years of heroic struggle, the SACP can proudly claim
its many unique contributions to the struggle for liberation in our
country. Indeed no history of South Africa can be written without the
role of the SACP. Our Party was founded in 1921, some four years after
the triumph of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia in 1917.

A party for national liberation

The
SACP has, since its foundation, been part of all the major political
developments in the struggle against national oppression. We were part
of heroic workers struggles against capitalism and exploitation.

We have been on every front and terrain of struggle. We are both a party of socialism and national
liberation. We resolved in 1929 to form an alliance with the ANC, as
the best placed organization to lead the national liberation movement to
which we are also committed. We evolved in practice dual political
membership through a principled loyalty to both the SACP and all other
political and progressive formations in which we have served, whether the ANC, trade unions or, of late, our democratic state. This has confused
and often angered and frustrated our enemies and detractors alike. We
have made enormous contributions and sacrifices in the building of the
ANC into what it has become today. At the same time, the SACP has also
learnt a great deal from the ANC, thus contributing to sharpening our
theoretical tools of analysis as well as grounding our struggle in the
realities of South Africa.

There
are those, both within and outside our liberation movement, who are
uncomfortable with the presence of a principled and activist Communist
Party within the alliance.
Today, the true agenda of many of those who take this anti- SACP
position stands exposed. They want to plunder the resources of our
country, they want to steal from working class and poor communities, so
that they can accumulate for themselves.. Some even claim to
substitute for the SACP as the vanguard of the working class. These are
the brazen tenderpreneurs and capitalist accumulators who steal the
language of ordinary people in order to accumulate for themselves .

Today,
just as we did over 80 years ago in 1929, as South African communists
we re-commit ourselves to our Alliance, to strengthen it as a
multi-class movement, uniting all progressive and democratic forces, all
those genuinely committed to struggling for a better life for all. But
to build the multi-class unity of our movement, we need to expose and
flush out all tenderpreneurs from the ranks of our movement. It is their money politics that lies behind the disruptive factional politics that distracts us from taking for the struggle for a non-racial, democratic and united South Africa.

A party with and for a progressive trade union movement

No
political party in our country can claim to equal the record of the
SACP in building the progressive trade union movement. From its
inception the Communist Party in South Africa not only threw its weight
behind the progressive struggles of the workers, but also, in its own
right, initiated and built progressive trade unions. We helped to build
the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU) in the 1920s,
communists led the mineworkers struggles culminating in the great
mineworkers strike of 1946, communists were in the vanguard of the
formation of SACTU in 1955, and, through our underground structures,
contributed significantly in the formation of COSATU in 1985.

Today
we still continue to be in the trenches with the progressive trade
union movement in the struggle for a living wage, the closing of the
apartheid wage gap, and for vastly expanding the social wage. That
is why today we are not only calling for a living wage, but for workers
to be able to live closer to their workplaces, to have an affordable
housing subsidy, for their children to enjoy access to schooling and
higher education and skills. In addition we want workers and the poor to
have affordable public transport and for national health insurance to ensure that all shall have access to health care.

We
are also a party committed to building working class power in the
workplace, on the shop-floor. Part of achieving this objective is to
ensure that not only do we democratize the workplace, but also to make
sure that the trade union movement itself is led by the workers through worker
democracy and leadership inside the unions. Trade union leaders must
themselves be subject to worker control and worker leadership at all
times.

Much
more critically for the SACP is the necessity to ensure that we build
red trade unions. In our context red trade unions must mean
congress-oriented unions, and a trade union movement that is genuinely
committed to socialism. It also must be a union movement that must fight
against all forms of workerism, liberalism and business unionism. We
must continue to fight against all tendencies in the trade union
movement that seek to position workers against the ANC, the alliance and
the government led by these formations.

In
this context, we re-affirm our commitment to deepen and strengthen our
relationship with COSATU. Our relationship with COSATU still remains the
principal socialist axis upon which we seek to consolidate and deepen the national democratic revolution. Together
with COSATU, we have rolled back the late 1990s drive to privatize
state owned enterprises, the struggle against outsourcing and
casualisation of the working class.

Let us as communists deepen our work with the progressive trade union movement

A party of mass activism, people’s power and political education

We
are also a communist party of mass activism, whether in the struggles
of the squatter camps in the 1940s through leaders like Dora Tamana, to
the 1950s Defiance campaigns and the mass offensive against apartheid,
to the post 1973 mass uprisings and the Red October Campaigns of the
post 1994 period.

Through
our Red October Campaigns we have won the struggle against the ‘willing
buyer, willing seller’ principle in land reform, won basic rights for
the workers and the poor to have access to financial services,, for the
regulation of the credit bureaux and support for a progressive
co-operative movement. These were the achievements mainly of SACP-led mass activism for radical land reform and the transformation of the capitalist financial sector.

We
have refused to be relegated to being only a party of theory, much as
we have led the theorization and analysis of our national liberation
struggle as a both an important objective in its own right as well as a
terrain of struggle for a socialist South Africa.

Mass
activism led by the SACP in particular, and our liberation movement in
general, has been informed by the need to build people’s power from
below. We have refused, and still resist, to being drawn into liberal
struggle and notions to build a ‘civil society’ movement. These have
often been movements of elites directed at weakening the majoritarian
power of the liberation movement.

Instead,
the SACP stands for the building of people’s power from below; to build
street committees, a progressive civic movement, a co-operative
movement, community policing forums, a shop steward movement on the
shop-floor (including COSATU locals), a truly progressive youth and
women’s movement of the workers and the poor, and generally a
people-driven movement representing the aspirations of the ordinary
workers and the poor of our country.

We
are for a people’s movement and people’s power to ensure that indeed
the people shall govern. It is a movement to ensure that it is not a DA
that must govern, it must not be a coalition of elites of ‘civil
society’ that must govern, not liberals and their ‘civil society’
tentacles, but the ordinary workers and the poor of our country, led by
the ANC and its allies.

Building
people’s power through mass struggles from below must also mean that we
must refuse to be reduced to an oppositionist movement to the ANC and
its government, or to become heroes of the media by virtue of
unprincipled criticism of our own movement, its leaders and government.
Taking co-responsibility for our revolution must not mean subsuming the
independence of working class organizations. Just as the independence of
our working class formations must not translate into oppositionist
politics to our own movement.

It
is through our principled campaign that this year we boast of a Party
that has 130,000 members. At our unbanning in 1990 the SACP only had
3000 members, a number it had never exceeded throughout its period of
its existence. Whilst many communist parties declined and even collapsed
after the fall of the Soviet Union (a setback indeed), ours has
continued to grow and earn the respect of millions of the workers and
the poor in our country.

An independent party, but a party of governance

The
SACP is a political party of the South African working class. It
therefore cannot only locate itself outside the state, but must also be
inside the state. There is no contradiction for an SACP that, in the
post 1994 period, is located both inside and outside the state. Instead,
this dual and dialectical location can only serve to advance the
building of working class power in all sites of power.

Building
an independent SACP and an SACP participating in the state is the
necessary condition for advancing people’s power and the socialist
objectives in the current period. It is a necessary condition to ensure
that the people shall govern.

Part
of building independent working class power must be to ensure that the
resources in the hands of the workers are controlled by the workers
themselves. For instance, workers’ moneys must be under their control
rather than under the unfettered control of bourgeois financial
institutions and banks. Let’s build co-operative banks controlled by
workers rather than bourgeois financial institutions. We are calling for
workers power in the financial sector – workers’ pension and provident
funds – to be controlled by workers, rather than allowing workers’
monies to be adjuncts to bourgeois financial institutions. Subjecting
workers’ financial resources to bourgeois financial institutions,
without a meaningful workers’ voice, can only promote business unionism rather than working class power over the financial sector!

True
to the traditions of our party, that of night schools to educate
workers and train communists, it is of absolute importance that we
deepen political education amongst the working class in particular, and
the poor of our country in general.

The relevance of communist values in the current period

The
two biggest threats to our national democratic revolution today are
populist demagoguery (underpinned by tenderpreneurship) and the
anti-majoritarian liberal offensive. Populist demagogues hijack militant
rhetoric in order to conceal
their agenda of narrow capitalist accumulation, which is completely
opposed to the interests of the overwhelming majority of the workers and
the poor of our country. It is
this reality that characterizes the close relationship between
demagoguery, narrow capitalist accumulation and corruption today.

These
opportunists also, increasingly, flout the longstanding non-racial
traditions of our movement with a narrow and chauvinistic Africanism.
They don’t want to change the underlying system of apartheid and
colonialism, they simply want to expropriate some of the ill-begotten
wealth of white capitalists for themselves. That is why, today, the SACP
continues to be proud of its pioneering role in building the traditions
of non-racialism in South Africa. From its very outset, the Communist
Party pioneered non-racialism – not just in theory - but
shoulder to shoulder in the trenches of struggle. We called for the
unity of the working class and of all progressive and democratic forces regardless of colour, gender, or ethnicity.

On
the other hand, South Africa today is experiencing a conservative,
anti-majority liberal offensive which seek to maliciously use our
institutions of democracy to undermine majority rule and try to
discredit (and challenge or undermine) the ANC alliance led government.
They pose as defenders of our democratic Constitution. But they pervert
and vulgarise our wonderful Constitution, by narrowly focusing only on
those elements of the Constitution that seek (quite correctly) to check
and balance the State. But they ignore all of the rest of the Bill of
Rights and Constitution which clearly mandate the democratically elected
state to carry forward far-reaching, radical transformation in line
with the document that inspired the Constitution – the Freedom Charter.
Such a liberal offensive seeks to capture all our institutions that
support democracy in order to use these to undermine the will of the
people as expressed through the periodic democratic elections.

Many
of these so-called ‘civil society’ groups are funded by the rich, both
domestically and internationally, to try and subvert the majority voice
of our people, and are worried by the staying power of the ANC and its
allies. In many instances liberation movements do not last a decade or
so in power, yet our Alliance looks strong. Such funding is normally in
the name of promoting democracy, as if there is no democracy in our
country, to strengthen the power of those who have lost elections, but
supported to rule from the grave. We need to build a popular movement to
defend the right of the people to govern after overwhelmingly
supporting our movement.

It
is in the light of all the above threats that we need to re-affirm the
relevance of the values that have been espoused by the SACP over its
90-year existence. These include selfless service to our people without
any expectation of reward. It
has consistently meant too reducing the gap between rich and poor, and
being humane and caring. It also means building the unity of our
alliance through concrete struggles on the ground.

In
the current period, the values espoused by the SACP over the last 90
years also mean fighting against all forms of factionalism and divisive
behaviour within our movement. Factionalism today is very strongly
linked to the politics of money and accumulation and an attempt to
capture our alliance organizations for purposes of selfish interests.

The
90 years of communist activism must also mean reclaiming what is best
from the history of our national liberation struggle and movement. This
also means commitment to fighting against all forms of corruption,
irrespective of who is involved. It must also mean that we wage a
consistent struggle so that the supporters of a system of exploitation
and their vanguard, the tenderpreneurs tremble before a national liberation movement in which communists play their rightful role.

As
we celebrate 90 years of a non-racial SACP, we need to intensify the
struggles for gender equality in society, by ensuring that we organize
and mobilize working class women to be in the forefront of the struggles
against partriarchy.

A communist programme of action to advance and deepen the national democratic revolution in the current period

Today, on our 90th
anniversary, we call upon all communists, working together with the
workers and poor of our country, to deepen mass mobilization to reduce
inequalities and achieve a better life for all.

The SACP will
continue to act together with the workers to fight for a living wage.
It is for this reason that the SACP wishes to, once more express its
solidarity with metal, engineering, chemical and mineworkers in their
legitimate struggles for a living wage. South African communists have
been, and will continue to be, in the trenches with the workers in these
sectors to win a living wage for all.

In
joining these struggles for a living wage, the SACP will continue to
advance the equally important struggle for an increase in the social
wage, for accessible and affordable public transport, for affordable
housing for the working class, for access to education and for access to
health for all.

Using
our voting district based branches, the SACP also calls, and will
struggle, for the building of street committees, community policing
forums, ward committees, school governing bodies, local health
committees and all other organs of people’s power. Let us not wage
newspaper-driven, often elite programmes, but people driven campaigns on
the ground!

Celebrating
90 years of the SACP must be about building organs of people’s power to
deepen the national democratic revolution as our most direct route to
socialism!

Internationalist solidarity

Since
our formation, we have been a party of internationalist working class
solidarity. We re-commit to intensify our solidarity with the Cuban
people and call for the release of the Cuban Five from US jails and the
end of the embargo against Cuba.

We
reiterate our solidarity with the Swazi people in their just struggle
for democracy. We call for the unbanning of all political parties, the
release of political prisoners as a pre-requisite to the democratization
in that country. We call upon government not to bail out Swaziland
without a commitment to do away with the Tinkundla system.

The
SACP calls for Morocco to grant the Saharawi people their right to
self-determination, and for Palestinian independence with an end to the
illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.

The
SACP will strengthen its internationalist solidarity work, especially
in the light of very real possibilities that the major capitalist
economies may experience another economic crisis. Let us strengthen
working class and socialist forces to roll back the capitalist system
and prevent the rise of a neo-fascist movement exploiting the plight of
the workers and the poor.